Nightmare at Noon (1988)

From https://torrentking.eu/covers/
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Director: Nikos Mastorakis

Screenplay: Nikos Mastorakis and Kirk Ellis

Cast: Wings Hauser as Ken Griffiths; Bo Hopkins as Reilly; George Kennedy as Sheriff Hanks; Kimberly Beck as Cheri Griffiths; Brion James as the Albino; Kimberly Ross as Julia

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #123

Outside of cinema, whilst I have yet been able to confirm the full history of this period in his life, Greek director-producer-writer Nikos Mastorakis is just as fascinating as he is in terms of his place in cult cinema. Before cinema he was a major figure in entertainment in his homeland of Greece between the sixties and seventies, including presenting a music show that presented rock and pop songs on television. In this period he was, as well, working underneath the military junta that turned Greece into a dictatorship between 1967-74 and at least involved him getting into significant trouble with said dictatorship for political reasons¹. Just after the junta, he openly went about a goal to create a film for commercial reasons with the intention of making it as shocking and transgressive as possible, thus leading to the 1976 Video Nasty Island of Death. After that, he founded his own production company Omega Entertainment, directing numerous thrillers, action films and horror flicks through the eighties and onwards including the slasher The Zero Boys (1986), action movie Hired To Kill (1990) with Brian Thompson and Oliver Reed, and Blind Date (1984), a serial killer horror in which the hero's a peeping tom who overcomes a sudden case of full blindness by way of than current computer tech².  In the midst of this is Nightmare at Noon, a sci-fi horror hybrid obsessed with westerns where albino Brion James poisons the water of a small (Utah filmed) town to turn the locals in green blooded kill-crazies. Only George Kennedy, Wings Hauser and Bo Hopkins can stop him and his mysterious goons.

It's a curious mix. For most of its length its actually more of an action film as, when the town population starts to go bug eyed and homicidal, it's by way of stunts that are pretty accomplished and spectacular for a small budgeted b-movie. Cars spinning off another car upside-down in the air to stuntmen falling off roofs, even a full body burn sequence. That its wrapped within a pseudo conspiracy narrative, where an experiment from an unknown group is responsible, adds idiosyncratic flavour. The obsession with the American western, from references to tone, is hilarious in its lack of subtlety but also has actual charm to it. At some point the cast eventually end up in the kind of desert locations you'd find in old westerns, magnificent in any production as well as here, on horses and emphasising the fact that with the exception of Hauser, two of these main actions in television and/or cinema have starred in western stories, this obsession with American culture even in the most known title for the film giving it personality.  

From https://professormortis.files.wordpress.com/2013/
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Cast wise its interesting too. Hauser is actually playing against his trademark roles here as an urbanite music lawyer, a man whose only claim to toughness is having dealt with Twisted Sister, his constant whining throughout the film completely against his reputation for playing heavies. In contrast Hopkins is your stereotypical man without a past, a hitchhiker whose cool personality and nonchalance feels like he's walked out of an older film. And George Kennedy is George Kennedy, always interesting onscreen as a reliable character actor. Brion James as the villain is actually more imposing here silent than he is making jokes in House III: The Horror Story (1989)³. He does look ridiculous, the evil albino stereotype dressed in a Colonel Sanders white jump suit, but his silent prescience shows why he was cast as heavies throughout his career. Behind the camera, its noticeable that part of the score was by Hans Zimmer with Stanley Myers. Yes, that Hans Zimmer who started his career composing for quite a few Nikos Mastorakis films. It's not as memorable as his bludgeoning scores for the likes of Inception (2010), but everyone starts somewhere and between him and Myers you still get the kind of score that evokes VHS age era horror memories.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BxK8T4W5P1w/maxresdefault.jpg

The issue, like Hired To Kill, like Blind Date, is that Mastorakis pads and ends films with doldrums in terms of plotting. He also has a tendency to squander potential resources for generic action. Female characters tend to be on the sidelines to a disadvantage; for three quarters of Nightmares at Noon, the daughter of George Kennedy's character is a tough female cop whose just as much of a reliable heavy as the men in the cast, only to become a mere love interest in the final act who's told to stay back because it's a man's job to take down the villain. Even Wings Hauser gets sidelined as well for that finale too. It's not motivated for any reason barring generic storytelling, Mastorakis paying too much attention to all those clichés of tidying films up under ninety minutes without taking advantage of the initial oddness almost all his films posses in their premises and initial resources. Even when the film closes out on a helicopter again helicopter chase in the valley, an eye-popping scene to include with real helicopters performing the stunts, you have to pass over the sluggish pace that develops in the final quarter. That negatively marks a film that before in the first three-quarters would've been reviewed as being a fun b-flick worth anyone's time.

From https://pxhst.co/avaxhome/00/9e/002e9e00.jpeg

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1) Its however difficult to establish what happened as the only source that describes any details are an un-sourced Wikipedia page and, as I was taught in university, one should never quote from Wikipedia even if it's a useful source, but from its accurate and confirmed sources.

2) Reviewed HERE at the last year's Halloween 31 For 31.

3) Reviewed HERE.